To quote The Pogo Papers, not quite as famous as the Pentagon papers but also a hereditary link to this issue:
Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
Interesting. So they think that by not reading him his Miranda rights, he's going to be legally savvy enough to know that he can safely spill more beans until such time as they do read them to him.
How do they explain this esoteric point of law to him in order to ensure he spouts info, without accidentally explaining his Miranda rights?
I don't see the investigation's upside in delaying reading him his rights if truly that is all it is - a delay in explaining to him the rights he still maintains whether or not he is aware of them.
On the surface they seem to be contending that not reading him his rights will give them extra leeway in interrogating him. This would only hold if they were in fact suspending his rights themselves and not just his right to be made explicitly aware of their existence.
The only advantage I can see to this tactic is to set a precedent to be used as a wedge to erode the rights themselves, not just the right to know about them.
I would be only too glad to hear of a less pessimistic explanation. Why take on the downside of trial complications unless there is much more at stake than telling him something he probably already knows?
I don't see any analysis of the sources of the claims.
Did claims from the entire spectrum of claimants suddenly increase tenfold, or did certain particular claimants start flooding the system with a huge number of complaints?
It would be interesting to know the distribution of complaints-per-claimant.
Other than the original days of Napster, I have since only ever resorted to downloading content when I find it impossible to buy a reasonable working copy of it either from the source or from their distributors, and even then only when it's something I really care to see or hear badly enough to download it.
Being unable to purchase media content despite my best efforts happens far too often due to zone restrictions, purchase windows, DRM, ecommerce and shopping cart fuckups and complete buttheadedness on the part of the industry.
It's almost ALWAYS possible to find downloadable content. If it were always possible to find purchaseable DRM-free content, I would ALWAYS purchase it. It's that simple.
It turns out it's not as simple as it seems at first. For the benefit of all, here are some things that have become clear to me this week.
Copyright isn't where the expense lies, it's Licensing.
If you want photos of public domain art works that are of high enough quality for print publication, you have a few choices.
1) You can send a photographer out to take photos of each work. Many will be in museums and will require negotiating a photography session with the museum. One reason is that the light used in high power flashes for this quality of photo has a high UV content and over time will contribute to deterioration of the work, so they limit access.
This is very expensive and time-consuming, but you will get high quality photos.
2) You can find a photographer or organization who has done #1 themselves or has bought the rights to license images from other photographers.
This will get you the quality photos, and save you some money.
3) You can try to source photos that have open and free licenses. While there are some organizations who are collecting such images (e.g. googleartproject.com, art.sy, and others), there is not a deep well of these resources, so your experience will result in a lot of searching and varied quality.
As you can see, #2 is optimal among these (possibly not exhaustive) choices.
When you want to get photos for your book, you pay a license fee to the person who can provide you with the high-quality source material. They calculate it based on a number of factors, one of which is the quality of the final images - i.e. it's cheaper to license a bunch of images to be presented in thumbnail or screen form than in full resolution.
If you print and sell 10,000 copies of your book, the cost component of the licensing is distributed much more thinly than if you have a limited run of 500 books. You have a choice of whether to present pictures in full, thumbnail, or online, or a combination. The choices made in this case resulted in a product that did not meet the needs of the audience (understated, I know, but that's the bottom line).
What this all comes down to is that once the logistics of producing a book are considered, it's apparent that there is no one entity in the chain demanding excessive profits. It's just the economics of a high quality small print run in play here, and then the design decisions that came out of that.
So far the response of the school and the publisher has been very positive and I'm optimistic that a much better solution will come out of this episode. Open dialogue has been spawned and the wider issues of copyright, licensing and the spiralling cost of a university education have been subjected to very public review and criticism.
Thanks to the students who started the petition, and TechDirt who provided a platform for wide recognition, this story promises to have as happy an ending as one could hope for.
The school has responded to concerns with a letter from the Dean. The relevant section is below.
I'm told that the course instructor was not in attendance at the first class and the resource materials requirements were distributed by a teaching assistant who didn't have a complete understanding of the issues.
There is an open meeting between the students and the Dean on Thursday to correct any misinformation.
===
Global Visual & Material Culture: Beginnings to 1800 is a custom textbook that basically combines three
textbooks into one:
1. Art History, 4th ed. by Stokstad and Cothren – excerpts from the full 1150-page text.
Volume One would retail for $144.
2. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide, 2nd ed. by Drucker/McVarish – excerpts.
This volume would retail for $92.
3. A custom reader with all the additional material we have added (which includes printed images)and would cost approximately $65 – $75 (see page iii of text for list of items).
You have also been given access to electronic versions of the full Stokstad/Cothren and Drucker/McVarish texts with all the images.
The book is complete as printed and is not missing pictures because we didn’t get copyright clearance in time. If we had opted for print clearance of all the Stokstad and Drucker images, the text would have
cost over $800.
====
Re: Snowmen is a traitor
He took the information to Hong Kong and released some of it to the press. He didn't GIVE it to China.
Besides, China is not an enemy, it's not even exactly a competitor, it's a trading partner.
What if he'd taken it to Canada, one of the other of the US's biggest trading partners? Would that still be treason in your eyes?
We have met the enemy.
To quote The Pogo Papers, not quite as famous as the Pentagon papers but also a hereditary link to this issue:
Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
He's not not telling the false untruth
If a myth is an assertion that is untrue, mustn't all of the False Myths he presents be truths?
Re: Custom dictionaries
to be clear, it's not just this administration, the last one just had a different custom dictionary.
Custom dictionaries
Like the quote from Bill Clinton, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."
They've borrowed the idea of pluggable dictionaries from the computer world.
In the custom dictionary used by this administration, 'spying' translates to 'spying, unless we're doing it in which case we mean not spying'.
With custom dictionaries, you can make your constitution and laws mean whatever you want them to. Just look at their definitions of
Whistleblower: 'Traitor'
Banker: 'Unimpeachably upstanding citizen'
Torture: 'not the stuff we do'
Oh, and by the way, you are not allowed access to their dictionary.
Comforting
Time to indict the publishers of Bin Laden's extensive bookshelf full of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books.
Re: Re: To what advantage?
Interesting. So they think that by not reading him his Miranda rights, he's going to be legally savvy enough to know that he can safely spill more beans until such time as they do read them to him.
How do they explain this esoteric point of law to him in order to ensure he spouts info, without accidentally explaining his Miranda rights?
To what advantage?
I don't see the investigation's upside in delaying reading him his rights if truly that is all it is - a delay in explaining to him the rights he still maintains whether or not he is aware of them.
On the surface they seem to be contending that not reading him his rights will give them extra leeway in interrogating him. This would only hold if they were in fact suspending his rights themselves and not just his right to be made explicitly aware of their existence.
The only advantage I can see to this tactic is to set a precedent to be used as a wedge to erode the rights themselves, not just the right to know about them.
I would be only too glad to hear of a less pessimistic explanation. Why take on the downside of trial complications unless there is much more at stake than telling him something he probably already knows?
Who is making the claims?
I don't see any analysis of the sources of the claims.
Did claims from the entire spectrum of claimants suddenly increase tenfold, or did certain particular claimants start flooding the system with a huge number of complaints?
It would be interesting to know the distribution of complaints-per-claimant.
If it were always possible to find purchaseable DRM-free content, I would ALWAYS purchase it. It's that simple
Other than the original days of Napster, I have since only ever resorted to downloading content when I find it impossible to buy a reasonable working copy of it either from the source or from their distributors, and even then only when it's something I really care to see or hear badly enough to download it.
Being unable to purchase media content despite my best efforts happens far too often due to zone restrictions, purchase windows, DRM, ecommerce and shopping cart fuckups and complete buttheadedness on the part of the industry.
It's almost ALWAYS possible to find downloadable content. If it were always possible to find purchaseable DRM-free content, I would ALWAYS purchase it. It's that simple.
Re: it reminds me...
Heh heh, you mean like iOS6.
http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2012/09/21/ios6-safari-ajax-issues/
Re: Re: Re: Momentum
It turns out it's not as simple as it seems at first. For the benefit of all, here are some things that have become clear to me this week.
Copyright isn't where the expense lies, it's Licensing.
If you want photos of public domain art works that are of high enough quality for print publication, you have a few choices.
1) You can send a photographer out to take photos of each work. Many will be in museums and will require negotiating a photography session with the museum. One reason is that the light used in high power flashes for this quality of photo has a high UV content and over time will contribute to deterioration of the work, so they limit access.
This is very expensive and time-consuming, but you will get high quality photos.
2) You can find a photographer or organization who has done #1 themselves or has bought the rights to license images from other photographers.
This will get you the quality photos, and save you some money.
3) You can try to source photos that have open and free licenses. While there are some organizations who are collecting such images (e.g. googleartproject.com, art.sy, and others), there is not a deep well of these resources, so your experience will result in a lot of searching and varied quality.
As you can see, #2 is optimal among these (possibly not exhaustive) choices.
When you want to get photos for your book, you pay a license fee to the person who can provide you with the high-quality source material. They calculate it based on a number of factors, one of which is the quality of the final images - i.e. it's cheaper to license a bunch of images to be presented in thumbnail or screen form than in full resolution.
If you print and sell 10,000 copies of your book, the cost component of the licensing is distributed much more thinly than if you have a limited run of 500 books. You have a choice of whether to present pictures in full, thumbnail, or online, or a combination. The choices made in this case resulted in a product that did not meet the needs of the audience (understated, I know, but that's the bottom line).
What this all comes down to is that once the logistics of producing a book are considered, it's apparent that there is no one entity in the chain demanding excessive profits. It's just the economics of a high quality small print run in play here, and then the design decisions that came out of that.
So far the response of the school and the publisher has been very positive and I'm optimistic that a much better solution will come out of this episode. Open dialogue has been spawned and the wider issues of copyright, licensing and the spiralling cost of a university education have been subjected to very public review and criticism.
Thanks to the students who started the petition, and TechDirt who provided a platform for wide recognition, this story promises to have as happy an ending as one could hope for.
Re: Momentum
I meant to say we have received from the school proposed solutions.
Momentum
I am very pleased that OCAD has responded with real proposed solutions to the problem. They have also called for another open discussion next week.
As much as I'm often cynical, in my telephone call with the Dean I did not detect any spin or disingenuous tone.
Out of this issue, we have proposed short term solutions and open discussion about educational resources and their costs.
Let's celebrate the progress we've made and engage to keep it going so longer term solutions can be found.
The book is only good for one term.
They want another $180 for another pretend book in January.
http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2012/09/18/remember-that-180-is-for-a-single-t erm-its-another-180-for-next-terms-pretend-textbook/
It's as bad as that and worse.
Wow. I was almost ready to acquiesce that perhaps folks had overreacted.
Take a look at a page from this disaster of a textbook.
http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2012/09/17/its-as-bad-as-that-and-worse/
Re: Re: Re: A Classics Fan
No he's not, He's pining.
Re: Response from the school
To clarify, I'm told by students that the teacher was not at the first class.
Response from the school
The school has responded to concerns with a letter from the Dean. The relevant section is below.
I'm told that the course instructor was not in attendance at the first class and the resource materials requirements were distributed by a teaching assistant who didn't have a complete understanding of the issues.
There is an open meeting between the students and the Dean on Thursday to correct any misinformation.
===
Global Visual & Material Culture: Beginnings to 1800 is a custom textbook that basically combines three
textbooks into one:
1. Art History, 4th ed. by Stokstad and Cothren – excerpts from the full 1150-page text.
Volume One would retail for $144.
2. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide, 2nd ed. by Drucker/McVarish – excerpts.
This volume would retail for $92.
3. A custom reader with all the additional material we have added (which includes printed images)and would cost approximately $65 – $75 (see page iii of text for list of items).
You have also been given access to electronic versions of the full Stokstad/Cothren and Drucker/McVarish texts with all the images.
The book is complete as printed and is not missing pictures because we didn’t get copyright clearance in time. If we had opted for print clearance of all the Stokstad and Drucker images, the text would have
cost over $800.
====
(untitled comment)
Of course there are principled politicians, but their very sanity gets them labeled as nutcases by the establishment and their media pals.